Jack pulled out his revolver and pointed it at Shiller. "Dr. Smith and Dr. Wesson are also consulting. You don't want to argue with these guys unless you're wearing Kevlar."

"You can't be serious."

"I'm dead serious-excuse the pun-and unless you want to decorate that wall you're standing next to, you better get this man into pre-op."

"I'm not gonna perform surgery at gunpoint."

"Yeah? Why not?" Jack asked.

"Well… well, just because…"

Jack brought the S amp;W up chest high. " 'Just because' only works in third grade. I'll need something a little more substantial."

"I… I don't have an operating theater. I don't have an anesthesiologist."

"They got all that stuff in the ER. Do it down there."

"You know all about it, huh? You know what it takes to do one of these?"

"It's an outpatient procedure. How tough can it be?"

"This is outrageous."

Jack thought that was a bit of an overstatement. It wasn't outrageous, at least not compared to the North Hollywood Bank Shootout. Next to that, this was only highly unusual.

The procedure took about forty minutes.

On Jack's instructions, Shiller only gave Herman a local anesthetic, because Jack wanted to leave with him immediately after surgery.

A probe and chip camera were fed into Herman's upper thigh, then threaded up through the vein to his heart. After a few minutes of searching, Shiller said, "There's where they fixed the arrhythmia. See on the scope… the little burn mark?"

Jack couldn't see it; the video screen looked like a plate of spaghetti to him, so he took Shiller's word.

Another minute or two of searching and they found the bug.

"I got something," Dr. Shiller said through his surgical mask.

After carefully unhooking one small suture, he grasped the tiny computer chip with the microscopic pincers on the surgical probe and withdrew it. They all watched on the TV monitor as it made a fascinating journey from Herman's sternal region, down the subscapular vein, through the thoracoepigastric vein, to the umbilical region, then into the great saphenous vein and out.

Shiller dropped the tiny chip on a metal tray. The bug was about one-quarter of the size of an aspirin tablet. Jack had never seen a satellite transmitter that small.

"What is it?" Shiller asked.

"Transmitter," Jack said, then reached over and smacked it with his gun butt, turning it to powder.

"You mean all that stuff was true?" Shiller seemed amazed.

But Jack was a student of human nature, and he could still read anger and defiance in the doctor's eyes. Shiller was just the type of guy who would try to get Jack to put the gun down and then either jump him or call security.

"How long until he can be moved?" Jack asked.

"That's up to him. Depends on how he feels."

"Herm?"

"I'm a little woozy, but I can make it."

"Okay, then we'll get you a wheelchair and leave." He opened the OR door and looked out at Susan, who couldn't bear to watch and was waiting in the hall. "Get a chair."

"How's Dad?"

"He's fine. We got it out," Jack said.

A few minutes later she rolled the wheelchair into the OR. Jack instructed Shiller to lift Herman off the table and settle him into the wheelchair. All five of them trooped out of the hospital. Susan led the way, carrying Herman's clothes. Jack brought up the rear, strolling casually behind the doctor with his S amp;W in his sport coat pocket, feeling like a character in a Scorsese movie.

Zimmy, Carolyn, and her muscle-bound boyfriend had picked up a car for them at Rent-a-Wreck and left the keys on the top of the right front tire. Then they all decided to get lost, promising not to return to their homes.

Jack retrieved the keys and loaded Herman into the backseat of an old Chrysler Imperial. Then Dr. Shiller, Susan, and Jack stood awkwardly next to the passenger door and searched for a way to say good-bye.

"I'm sorry it had to happen this way, but thank you, Doctor," Susan said earnestly. Jack thought Dr. Shiller thawed about two degrees, but he didn't choose to say anything, so Jack got behind the wheel. Susan sat beside him, and with Herman sprawled in the back, they pulled away from Cedars-Sinai Hospital, fairly confident that nothing was beeping or flashing on a screen anywhere. No satellite tracks or Octopus tails, just three frightened people on the run in a beat-up car that barely ran.

They stopped at a gas station, and while Jack filled the tank Herman changed out of the hospital gown and placed a call from the pay phone to Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen's Hollywood office. They had donated money to the Institute in the past and were fierce environmentalists who worried about the destruction of the ozone layer, global warming, and the pollution of the oceans.

He didn't expect to actually get them on the phone, because when they weren't in production they were at their home on Martha's Vineyard. Their secretary, Louise, answered.

"It's Herman. How ya doing?" he said as soon as she picked up.

"Jeez, Strock, we were just talking about you. Mary wanted to invite you to a Memorial Day party on the Vineyard, but we didn't know where to reach you."

"Send the invite to the office in D.C. I'll be sure to make it if I can," he said. Then he told her that he wanted to borrow Ted's fishing boat for a few days because he needed a quiet place to work. Louise put him on hold while she got her bosses on the phone.

She came back a few minutes later. "Ted says okay. Just be sure to lock up when you leave, and reset the alarm." She told him where the Hide-a-Key was and gave him the alarm code.

Minutes later they were back in the rented Chrysler heading to Lido Island in Newport Beach.

As he rested in the backseat new strategies and plans were forming in Herman's head. He was considering filing a temporary restraining order against the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A TRO was only good for ten days, renewable for an additional ten. Twenty days just might be enough time to do what he needed to do. There were federal laws already on the books prohibiting genetic cloning, and, although those laws were rarely enforced, Herman could still file under them.

He made a mental list of things to do. He needed to retrieve his computer that was still at the beach house and download the gene map that Zimmy had e-mailed. He also had to contact Sandy Toshiabi, his animal-rights expert. He would need to talk to his secretary, Leona Mae, get her to pull together all the background material, legal precedents, and any other laws restricting genetic research or genetic engineering. There was a helluva lot to do and almost no time to do it.

Also hovering in the back of his mind was what Dr. Adjemenian had said. This new animal, this chimera, was 99.1 percent human-only nine tenths of one percent different from Homo sapiens.

His preliminary strategy was simple yet compelling. Animal-rights activists had been trying to achieve legal standing in the courts for gorillas, chimps, and other primates for a long time. Legal "standing" currently only applied to Homo sapiens under the U.S. Constitution.

Because no other species on the planet enjoyed legal standing, they had to seek injunctive or compensatory relief through an organization that would sue for redress on behalf of the animal. It was this very fact that had compelled Herman to create the Danaus Plexippus Foundation.

The legal history on standing was fascinating and taught to every first-year law student.

At one time even slaves could not avail themselves of the benefits of the United States Constitution. In 1857, a slave named Dred Scott attempted to go into court to sue for his freedom. The Supremes ruled that he was property and, as such, had no rights under the law.